In today's information age, individuals, businesses, and other entities have access to many information sources. The Internet, for example, has become one of the world's largest sources of information and provides instantaneous access to data from across the globe. Other sources of information include personal and corporate databases, as well as professional data sources.
Data and the information derived from it can be used for many purposes. In some cases, it may be used for personal reasons, such as determining where to live or travel. In other cases, it may be used for commercial or business reasons. For example, a company may desire to analyze a number of different states or geographic regions to determine where to build or relocate a new factory or office. In a knowledge economy, information can also be used to provide commercialized products and solutions for consumers.
Current systems and tools for analyzing data, however, do not allow users to efficiently manage and analyze data. Among other things, current solutions do not allow users to select, weigh, manipulate, and visualize data in ways suitable to their needs. Thus, it may be difficult and time consuming for a user to evaluate data for a variety of purposes, such as to calculate the desirability of a given location based on a set of criteria or to weigh locations against one another. Current solutions also suffer from other drawbacks, such as limited scalability, flexibility, and/or customization. Therefore, improved systems and methods are desired that provide effective data management and visualization features, while addressing one or more of the above drawbacks and disadvantages.